Monthly Archives: February 2009

Have you checked out the Sock Summit teacher line-up? I know it’s been kind of everywhere, but I think it deserves repeating. I mean Meg Swansen and Priscilla Gibson-Roberts and Barbara Walker! I have the feeling I won’t be able to go though. I am going up to Tacoma in the beginning of June for the Northwest Regional Spinner’s Association retreat. So a trip to the NW two months after that probably won’t work. And maybe I’ll be in Virginia which would make it a lot harder to get there.

We still have the ASCH Color Connects conference to look forward to next weekend. Of course we’re not taking any classes and I’m not making purchases for Lent. But it could still be fun.

I had planned on just having a post of me jabbering about random stuff. But wait I finished something!

Yarn: Malabrigo Worsted in Brillante. I used almost exactly 3 skeins. It was another race against yarn supply.

I used US 8 needles and knit in between a S and a M. It was hard to decide because the pattern doesn’t give schematics or approximate circumference or anything. All I know is in real clothes I wear a medium, but often in knitting patterns I wear a small. I tried it on while it was in progress and it was pretty tight. But it relaxed a bit in blocking which was a good thing.

This was the project I started because of all my hand-hurting cotton projects. It was pretty fun to knit. It’s made with modular triangles. The sleeves are upside-down triangles.

Because I was running low on yarn I decided to do the armhole ribbing and neck band before knitting the ribbing at the bottom. I was trying to be conservative with the yarn. The pattern calls for a 1″ band for the neck. I followed this, but afterwards realized that the band in the pattern picture must be closer to 2″. I think it would look better that way, but I was trying to eek out more length. So my neck is a little wonky but I guess I could claim that I wanted it that way. My button tabs on the sleeves go the opposite direction from the picture. I blindy followed the directions for the first sleeve and then had to replicate it for the second sleeve. I sewed the buttons on through both layers of fabric. It didn’t seem worth the effort to make a buttonhole.

I am definitely not crazy about the top as a whole. I think the pattern is pretty cool and would like the finished item in a solid yarn. It is quite busy. Also the arm opening ended up huge. It looks better in the picture because I am tucking extra fabric under my armpits! I could have picked up fewer stitches for the ribbing or overlapped the button flap more. I thought about it, but that makes an uber-puffy sleeve. Maybe I could have seamed the triangles together a bit in the armpit and picked up fewer stitches for the ribbing. Oh well. Maybe it’s the perfect sweater for me to make out of Malabrigo. Something that won’t get worn often! No chance for pilling.

I had some trouble finding the right outfit for it. My favorite one at home involved gaucho pants and heels. But I barely had the balls to wear just the sweater with black pants to work so anything over and beyond that is past me.

I am close to finishing a couple of things so I’ll have something new to share soon. And these ones I think I’m going to be super into.

Oh, and I’ll bring it up again when the date is closer, but the UCLA Festival of Preservation is coming up in the middle of March. It’ll go on for a couple of months. I did some work on a lot of the films being shown and many of them are worth seeing. We’ve been having some technical/logistical problems recently, much of it related to the state budget. But I hope you guys can go and support the preservationists that I work with because they deserve it.

I don’t want to make too big a deal out of the fact that I’ve been the lamest co-blogger ever (as I may have mentioned previously) because I really do have a lot on my plate right now with massage school and the new beau, both of which equate to a new commute time of approximately two hours a day in the car. Not that I’m complaining, both school and the beau are fantastical! Anywhoohaa, I got this iPhone and have been downloading nifty apps at a mile a minute and stumbled across an app for wordpress bloggers. I thought how cool! I need to try that out! So that is what I am doing. 🙂 if you are reading this… It worked and you may actually see me on the blog every once in a while for a change.

So I’m not quite sure how it’s going to work with formatting and inserting photos and such so I’m going to try and keep it simple.

I’m chugging along on the Baby Cables and Big Ones Too sweater. (sorry there’s no raverly link or link to pattern. Doesn’t seem like I have the option to hyperlink text here.) I’ve been working on it in every available minute like during class breaks or in traffic. I know that’s bad but I have enough time at a dead standstill that I can usually get in a row or two of stockinette on my way to work. And i’ve gotten really good at knitting without looking 🙂 so anyway, I’m on my last set of waist shaping increases on the bottom so there only a few inches to go before I get to start the sleeves. The best part about this sweater experience is that I was finally able to wrap my brain around the cableing without a cable needle trick. It really does make all the difference in the world and I find myself now searching out cabled projects for the future.

Oh and it looks like our Knitpicks order has shipped!

And one last thing… If you haven’t checker out the yarn harlot’s blog today you should. It totally blew my mind! Can’t wait to try feeding my fiber into the carder sideways!!!!!!!! (once again, apologies for not being able to add an easy link. )

I finally have something to show you. I joined a cardigan KAL on the Anthropologie Knits group a while back. I finished my cardigan, but I didn’t really knit along with anyone or update them on my progress or anything. Hmm, it seems I don’t really know how these KALs are supposed to go. In any case, I was working on the Eyelet Front Cardigan from a recent vogue. The knitting went super quick, but it was getting the pictures that was the hardest! In any case, weeks after finishing I got some pictures taken today.

Yarn: Dream in Color Classy in Midnight Derby. I used about 1.6 balls of yarn. About 400 yds. That seems preposterous. I really thought I was going to run out of yarn, again.

The pattern calls for a worsted weight yarn. I went ahead and bought this worsted weight yarn specifically for this project. But it is really gauzy at this gauge, and if I was doing it over I would rework the gauge for a tighter fabric. I was prepared for a disaster when it came to blocking. When I took it out of the water is was twice the size it was knit! But I kind of smushed it together when blocking and it ended up drying in about the right shape.

I had made it in a size much smaller than my own size, but with the relaxing of the wool, it ended up fitting nicely. A little stretched I guess. Here’s a picture of the back.:

Besides that I’ve just been plugging away at some other projects. They’re all in the same color family. I thought I didn’t have a favorite color, but I come back to blue time and time again. My other works in progress are:

A sweater that I think I’m going to love when it’s done, but that I currently hate knitting. It hurts my hands and wrists so bad. It’s Mission Falls 1824 Cotton and worked at a tight gauge. I have finished the back and one sleeve. So halfway there.

As it turns out, the project to relieve your wrists from cableing with cotton yarn should not be another cabled project that involves cotton yarn knit at a tight gauge. So that’s on hold now until I finish that sweater.

I’m working on another top, but it’s not blue and I don’t have any close-to-recent pictures of it. I think it may be a disaster, but I’ll share the pictures of it when it’s done. I worked on it a lot yesterday because I was at home sick with maybe the flu.

I hope you enjoy the long weekend. And have a good Valentine’s Day. My parents sent me an Amazon gift card. Which was really exciting. I was planning on buying A Stitch in Time with it, but when I finally decided to do it, its status changed from “2-3 weeks” to “no longer available”. What a bummer. And even though I wanted it quite a bit, now I feel like I need it. I get this way about things I can’t find. I know that I could order it from other online sources in the UK. I just really wanted to use my gift cards for it. You probably can’t use US gift cards on amazon.co.uk, can you?

My only hope for this weekend is that I don’t buy a 6-pack of Cold Stone ice-cream cupcakes and eat them all myself. Have a good one!